Popsmacked!: This summer’s sequel culture gives artistry the boot on the big screen

The Dark Knight

Heading into yet another summer of sequels, prequels and movie reboots, one thing has become eminently clear: if acclaimed Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola were starting out today, his box office breakthrough wouldn’t be The Godfather — which won a best picture Oscar and made enduring stars of its cast — it would be an effects-enhanced comic book movie like The Dark Knight.

Ignore for a moment The Godfather’s pulp novel origins. Coppola, then a 31-year-old neophyte who had yet to have a hit under his own name — he won a 1970 screenwriting Oscar for Patton — was somehow able to fight studio interference and repeated attempts to fire him to create an iconic film trilogy that reflected his own personal vision.

Director Christopher Nolan, making films 40 years later — and three decades after his exhausted, financially strapped predecessor gave up the fight and ceased to be a player — is following a similar trajectory, but within a far more limited universe.

But in ways that can only hamper true talent, they also reflect Hollywood’s current risk-averse rule of thumb: It’s all about the franchise, man.

What this means, in short, is that even brilliant auteurs like Nolan — whose indie flick Memento (2000) marked him as a talent to watch — are victims of a bottom line mentality, forced to work their creative magic inside a pro forma straitjacket that limits them to big budget blockbusters, mostly sequels, that trumpet style over substance.

Is this a good thing?

My guess is that it probably won’t hurt Nolan, who has proven his ability to graft dark emotional currents to films built on over-the-top excess.

“He can do massive scale productions and do them with the integrity of an artist,’’ notes actor Gary Oldman about Nolan’s directing prowess in The Dark Knight Rises.

But here’s the rub: these are still films about a grown man — tortured and emotionally distraught though he might be — who dons spandex tights to stop crazed lunatics from waging misguided attacks on humanity.

And when it comes to compromising artistic principles for box office success, it’s not an exclusive club.

In addition to Nolan, indie/cult gurus like Joss Whedon (TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer), J.J. Abrams (TV’s Lost) and Marc Webb (indie flick 500 Days of Summer) have also forfeited creative control for a shot at the big time, making populist films like The Avengers, Star Trek and the upcoming Spider-Man reboot — if the trend continues — smarter, sharper and more incisive by virtue of their talent and drive.

If I were 12, I’d be clicking my heels with joy, though I’d probably be just as happy with inferior schlock like Pirates of the Caribbean and Piranha 3DD (as long as the special effects were really gross and lots of limbs got torn off) — films, in short, without vision or subtext.

As an adult, I have to decree this travesty for what it is: a lost generation of filmmakers whose best work will forever be clouded by 3D gimmickry and script-by-committee adjustments that dictate theatre-rattling explosions and prolonged special effects punchouts at precise 12-minute intervals, regardless of plot exposition.

To yank this into perspective, consider that 40 years ago, the year’s top grossing film, The Godfather, was also the year’s top Oscar winner: artistry and box office were, at that point, inexorably intertwined.

Consider that in 1971, films like The French Connection, Last Picture Show, Clockwork Orange and Carnal Knowledge were all critically lauded box office smashes — not a sequel in the bunch — as were M*A*S*H (‘70), Patton (’70) and Easy Rider (‘69).

And then there’s Midnight Cowboy, a story about two down-and-out losers with a gay sex subplot that was not only the second highest grossing film of ’69 but the only best picture Oscar winner ever slapped with an X rating.

If any of these films were made today, they might still win Oscars and play the festival circuit, but with their provocative themes and offbeat sensibilities, you can bet they’d never see the inside of a megaplex.

Gross exaggeration? Check out 2011’s chart-toppers, every one a special effects sequel geared to filmgoers under 20: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (technically, a sequel within a sequel), Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1, Kung Fu Panda 2 ... but why go on?

Coppola, keep in mind, went on to make game-changing anomalies like The Conversation, The Godfather Part II (a sequel that raised the bar on sequels) and Apocalypse Now before flaming out in a blaze of bad publicity with his ambitiously awful musical romance One From the Heart (1982).

Will Nolan get the same chance once his Dark Knight flees Gotham City forever?

I doubt it.

The vision that once defined Hollywood, the desire for experimentation that was still in evidence three, even two decades ago, has been extinguished by fear — of dwindling profits, encroaching diversions like video games and the internet, and the instant gratification ethos of a generation for whom movies are but one in a sea of entertainment options.

And so we have this summer’s slate of high-concept brain-bangers: Men In Black 3, The Avengers, Piranha 3DD and — in the weeks ahead — The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3), The Dark Knight Rises (July 20), Total Recall (Aug. 3), G.I. Joe: Retaliation (June 29), The Bourne Legacy (Aug. 3) and The Expendables 2 (Aug. 17).

BANG! POW! SMASH!

Locked in survival mode, Hollywood does what profit-generating institutions always do when their bottom line is threatened: puts its head up its butt and sticks to what it knows.